I was thinking about how many locos i’ll need and came up with an idea. assuming you only see one side at a time of a train and you have a turnaround loop in staging, you could give the name engine a diff # on each side. Maybe weather it a little differently (except make the roof uniform). It would in effect double your roster if you do it to all!!!
I don’t remember the guy’s name, but he is the fella that used to do the short stories in MR about the train crews on his MR. His RR was the Coal Belt. Anyway, I read an article where he did that to an entire train. Does anyone else remember that article? Jason
Yep. It was something about tricks that added to the realism. He was able to double the number of cars on his layout that way. I’m not so sure about engines though. You would have to leave off bugboard numbers. Cars on the other hand have nothing on the ends that would detract.
In fact, the idea is as old as the hills and predates the Coal Belt’s usage by about half a century! The first application of this technique that I am aware of was at the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair, where such cars were employed on the huge 40x160-foot O-gauge display layout “Railroads at Work”. Double-sided freight cars from that exhibit nearly 70 years ago command huge sums today among collectors when they come up for auction on places like eBay.
CNJ831
This is the same tactic (trick) the Russian navy did with their ships during the Cold War.
Tom
The Germans were well known for using it on their raiders during WWII. The Allied command would be going after 4 or 5 raiders when actually there was only one. The Germans disguised it as several different ships, including an American heavy cruiser. I give them an A for effort.
I doubted I was the first to think of it but it made sense at the time. Forgot about the number boards, but who can read them in n anyway?!!!
I’ve done that on several scratch-built G-scale pieces of rolling stock – a different road name and number on each side so as they go around in a large loop they do appear to be a different train.
So, how would you program the decoder?
A similar idea is to place strategically located mirrors–can lead to the illusion of a larger layout. Nice example of this in MRR a few months back–the Zanesville, Ohio club–pretty impressive effect, at least in the photos in the article.
Jim
The allies played “how many do we have” aswell. The allies built inflateable tanks and put them in arias where the germans could see them so there was less of a chance they would figure out D-day.
I don’t recall the aurthur of The Coal Belt series, but I remember a trick he had where one engine eas wired opposite of another and he coud run both engine in different directions at the same ime with one power pasided cars mack. Theavnl two-sided cas s make sense from an economical stand point, only have to buy half as much rolling stock.
It’s an old trick I believe was featured or at least talked about by Tony Koester in an old MR magazine. It was to increase variables for operations.
They named all the ships using only 100 names for 400 vessels and the numbers on the boats never matched the radio call signs. There was even a report of a fishing vessel that dumped all it days catch every night because their holds were full and their spy mission wasn’t finished. Nobody believed they were fishing anyway, but they kept up the pretense for months.
I was thinking of doing the opposite in a way. Running a loop with a coal loader at one end and dock at the other and running it so as an train vanished in a tunnel, a few minutes later the full train would appear with all the same cars and locos going the other way. The non-viewed train would hide in the back drop or under the mainline.
It’s called “loads-in-loads-out” which is usually a misnomer as it’s at least half “empties-in-empties-out”.
In HO in 6x20 space it won’t be practicle. I thought of going to N, but feel too attached to all my old trains.
A few years ago, I read a book written by a former NATO advisor, Andrew Cockburn. In his book titled The Threat: Inside the Soviet Military Machine, he wrote about a supposed supersub that was based at their base in the Kamchatka peninsula. This sub has been photographed by CIA satellites for 2 days in a row. On the third day, it was obscured by a storm in the area. It was photographed on the fourth day, and had been broken in half. It turned out that the sub was rubber.
[banghead]
Mac…are you the same guy from trackforum.com?
Ken,
That’s not me, the only other rail-related forum I lurk on is railspot yahoo group.
mac